Systematic review of interruptions in the emergency department work environment

•Currently, interruptions in the Emergency Department setting are broadly conceptualized as breaks in attention and activity, generally studied in the context of workflow, inconsistently operationalized across disciplines and research teams, and commonly explained by a linear structure-process-outcomes model.•The use of standardized definitions and measurements in interruptions research could contribute to measuring the impact and influence of interruptions on clinicians’ productivity and efficiency as well as patient outcomes.•In half of the recent studies of interruptions in the Emergency Department setting, quantitative measures of interruptions were descriptive only, without outcomes measurements of interruptions’ consequences.•Overall, relationships between ED interruptions and their causes and consequences are primarily derived from direct observation within large academic hospitals using heterogeneous definitions.•These findings highlight the importance of multidisciplinary interruptions research that builds on common data definitions and frameworks, to advance research into more diverse settings (e.g., beyond large academic hospitals) for intervention development and testing, which are relatively unexplored areas of research.